Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).

In April we began discussing the possible end of the Transaction Account Guarantee at the end of this year, describing it as a kind of collateral-substitute and as a pseudo-bailout for certain investors (the most extremely risk-averse) in money market funds.